‘Maximalist’
Else Madsen Gallery, through Feb. 16
Meg Stone’s charcoal drawings are elegant Rorschach tests. She consumes large sheets of heavy cotton paper with fuzzy, rubbed-in, soft gray scales, leaving just a bit of the pure white background in its virginal state. Then she lets go with a dark line, and I mean these loose lines do the rumba, cutting the rug up and down the composition. Finally, she shades in some of the spaces, creating both foreground silhouettes and interesting negative spaces. These drawings, while they are very abstract, carefully layered, and developed thoroughly, are rhythmically and spatially complex. Just because they are black-and-white charcoals does not mean they are simple or minimal. I can find monkeys, bits of faces, and hints of realistic objects in them. That’s why they are in the “Maximalist” show at the Else Madsen Gallery in the Brazos Lofts. Curated by participating artist Michael Abelman, “Maximalist” also includes the funny collages of Shawna Mouser.
These are altogether some of the best titled works I’ve seen. Good titles are like a good bonus prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box – not what got you interested but a bonus chuckle. Curl Up and Lie is the name of Michael Abelman’s painting of a winding river as viewed from an airplane. His topographical maps are made by pouring latex to form bumpy mountain ranges. He achieves a natural-looking aggregation of materials, then adds some straight lines and dots to represent cities and roads. They can be as thick as 3 inches of paint, and with the cities and funny titles, they are rich and substantial landscapes.
Rounding out the show are the collages of Mouser. She uses magazine images and creates surreal moments with her original combinations. She lets the collages breathe compositionally; they are not overworked. Her use of scale is quite clever with dramatic shifts. The narratives are lighthearted, like the idyllic traveler who is about to go on a journey either to outer space or to New York City. As Picasso said, “Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth,” so perhaps Mouser is correct in equating the probability of surviving in either place. She is able to convince you that the environment she portrays could exist. Good art creates believable stories in small spaces. That’s what “Maximalist” does; this art transforms the Downtown office lobby into an intimate gallery and good afternoon stop.
This article appears in January 25 • 2008.